Va. poll: McAuliffe takes slight lead

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened up a lead over Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in the race to become Virginia’s next governor, according to a poll Thursday

McAuliffe is grabbing 43 percent of the vote to Cuccinelli’s 38 percent in the Quinnipiac University poll, a contrast with recent polls that had shown either a small lead for the Republican or a dead heat. While the race is expected to be one of the closest-watched and most expensive of 2013, Virginians still haven’t fully tuned in: 60 percent haven’t heard enough about McAuliffe to form an opinion. Forty-two percent said the same of Cuccinelli.

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And at this point, neither candidate has succeed in painting his opponent as unacceptable. McAuliffe’s campaign has been casting the Attorney General as ‘Creepy Ken,’ but only 28 percent of voters said Cuccinelli was too conservative, compared to 38 percent who said he was just right. And while Team Cuccinelli has been questioning the former DNC chair’s business record, 31 percent of voters said he had the right experience to be governor, compared to 26 percent who didn’t.

The poll also found good news for Democrats in 2016. Both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the state’s senior senator, Mark Warner, would beat two big name Republicans in the Old Dominion. Clinton defeats Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 51 percent to 38 percent, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, 50 percent to 40 percent. Warner leads Rubio by 51 percent to 33 percent. He bests Ryan 50 percent to 37 percent.

The poll of 1,286 registered voters was conducted May 8 to May 13. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.